attributing the practice to weigh in the assessment of the Government revenue, and praying for protection, proceeded to move the following resolution:--- "That, by a report lately laid on the table, it is proved to the entire conviction of the house that torture, or the infliction of pain for the purpose of confession or extortion, has long been practised and still continues to be practised by the native officers of Government in the realisation of the public revenues and the administration of criminal law to a greater or less extent, throughout all the twenty provinces constituting the Government of Madras: that the aforesaid torture, although clandestine and unauthorised, has been for many years known and admitted by the constituted authorities at home and in India, as shown by the public records: that this house views the aforesaid practice of torture, affecting so many millions of her Majesty's subjects, whether as an instrument for the realisation of the public revenues or the administration of criminal law, or for any other purpose whatsoever, as repugnant to natural justice, abhorrent to humanity, and highly disgraceful to the Horrible character of this nation: and that this House hereby pledges perpetrated itself to pursue the speediest and most effectual measures within in India its power for the annihilation of the odious and barbarous rule. practice of torture within the above-mentioned Government and Presidency of Madras." atrocities der British The Cout of Directors of the East The noble Earl said that the report on their lordship's table had fully proved that the officers of the Madras establishment had frequently inflicted torture upon the inhabitants of the Presidency of Madras. Indeed, every report, from 1806 to 1852, established this fact beyond a doubt. It was said that those tortures were not of the class stated by the petitioners; and, indeed a resolution of the Court of Directors, passed on the 12th of September, 1855, went the length of stating that those tortures were imaginary. But that they were not so, the India Comfollowing list would show :-Deprivation of food and water; ignorance hindering a man from sleeping; tying a necklace of bones or driful other disgusting materials round the neck; compelling a man to sit on his heels, with brickbats or sharp stones under the hams; striking two defaulters against cach other; tying two persons together by the hair of the head in a stooping posture; tying a man in a stooping posture to the wheel of a cart; tying a man by the hair of the head to the tail of an ass, and thus parading him through the public market; forcing a man into a pany feign of the deeds per petrated by their col lectors of revenue. amuse ments per revenue collectors of the "Honour pany. Unnatural stooping position, with a man on his back; binding a man to one tree, and hoisting his leg by a rope attached to another; formed by suspending the body by the heels to the bough of a tree; placing the muzzle of a musket on the great toe, and forcing the party to continue with it for hours in a burning sun; placing a stake on the chest, with a man seated at each end to produce India Com- partial suffocation. There was also a torture of lifting up a man by his moustachios, and tearing them up by the roots, which was a very great torture and indignity. They were also exposed to the punishment of the stocks, the process of which in India was, to lay the accused on his back, with his heels up in the air, exposed to the burning influence of the sun by day, and the damp and cold by night. Another mode of torture was placing a man, denuded of his dress, on a nest of red Indian ants, the bite of which was venomous, the creature infusing an inflaming acid into the part which it stings. Another mode of torture was, that of squeezing the fingers by an instrument (the kittee), and thus producing very great agony. Another great instrument of torture was, that by which the fingers were forced back on the back part of the hand; pounding the joints with a mallet was another mode of inflicting torture. At page 80 of the report, their lordships would find that death frequently esnued from the infliction of those tortures to exact revenue. Among the varieties of torture was that of applying a bamboo pincers to a woman's breast. Those instances of torture were taken, he might observe, from a paper read at the board of the East India Directors, and furnished by one of the of Directors officers holding the rank of captain in their service; and the India Com- despatch from the directors to the government of Madras, alluded to that passage in the report, in which it is stated by the natives, that the European officers connived at those tortures, although that was denied by the authorities. He (the Earl of Albemarle,) might say, that the natives in their petition, expressed the greatest confidence in their lordships, to whom they trusted for such a redress of their wrongs, as would put an end to the tortures so cruelly and unjustly inflicted upon them. He had merely stated the facts, and he would leave their lordships to draw their own conclusions. Now, in reference to the report, he begged to inquire whether it was true, as stated by the natives, that the European officers were guilty of connivance at the tortures inflicted upon them by the revenue collectors. Mr. J. J. Minchin, a sub-inspector of Nittore, The Court of the East pany to be prosecuted as accom plices of their collectors. stated that the answers to any questions of this kind did not show that the European officers connived at the tortures complained of; and it was also stated, the impression entertained by the natives was that the whole European Government was a void in relation to them. At page 115, Mr. T. W. Goodwin, a judge in the presidency, states that, as far as he was aware, there was connivance by the civil officers, exhibited in various ways. Another gentleman, the Hon. W. Elliott, who made a very able report on the subject of these complaints, said that of 215 responses only seven expressed a disbelief in the existence of the practice of torture, and seventeen gave no positive opinion; while 197 (of whom twelve were officers in the administration of the Civil Service of India) expressed their belief in the prevalence of torture in a greater or lesser degree. Judge Cotton, in answer to an inquiry, said,-If the civil service were asked "Did torture exist?" his belief was that, from the highest to the lowest, the answer must be in the affirmative. He (the Earl of Albemarle) might be supposed very uncharitable about the charge of connivance; but he could not help thinking that the civil servants were not in many cases free from it. The noble marquis referred to the answers of Mr. E. A. Thomas, and Mr. J. Boreham, indicating that torture had ceased to exist; and cited the case of a man in one of the districts of the presidency, whose body was rubbed over with cotton soaked in oil, and who died under the torture while being brought to Mr. Porteus, the surgeon. From 1847 to 1853, there were sixty offences, of which thirty-one resulted in convictions made by the Company's magistrates, and thirteen of them were made by Mr. Walhouse, who asserted that torture Unseenly did not exist in the presidency, and who gave Mr. Danby Mr. Wa' Seymour the lie on the subject. In addition to the many tortures that he (the Earl of Albemarle) had enumerated, he might inform their lordships that many of the poor people were Seymour. flogged to death; and in many of those cases torture was British sub jects in inflicted for so small a sum as twelve rupees by the magistrates. India flogNow, in England magistrates would be dismissed from office if gedtodeath guilty of conduct of the kind he had described to their magis lordships. Those tortures, so disgraceful and so frequent and tratos, so cruel, would never have come to light had it not been that Mr. Danby Seymour, a private traveller in India, had discovered and exposed them. They had the evidence of several official persons that the Government of India considered it impossible conduct of house towards Mr Danby by order of sition as practised by the Hon ourable East India Company. to collect the revenues without having recourse, by their collectors and other officers, to those tortures; and a belief was entertained that, should they resort to any other mode than that of torture for collecting the revenues, a void would occur in the exchequer of Madras. On that head, Mr. J. J. Minchin, acting The Inqui- as sub-collector, says: "I believe there is not one native official who does not expect that the new system will be followed by a decrease of 50,000 rupees, or a lack and a-half, or £10,000, or £15,000 for the whole district; and if all the other collections were in the same condition as Nittore, the Madras revenue would be nearly 8 per cent., or £350,000, decreased;" and that, let it be remembered, was extracted from the natives by the practice of torture. Having shown that torture and high assessments were inseparable; he would now, from the same report, prove the converse by reference to low assessment, which did not hold out the same inducement to torture. Take, for instance, the town of Madras.. In the town of Madras torture was not inflicted. The reason was obvious-because there was a fixed rent; and in Malabar and Canara, there was not that system of torture complained of practised, because the people were of independent spirit, and somewhat rebellious-and the assessment was consequently low. There was another system there known as the ryot-wurry, which was a system explained in Wilson's Glossary of India. That system was also productive of the greatest exactions. The assessors and collectors of the land revenues were natives, and received the low stipend of £12 a-year. They did not live on that pittance, and they raked out the rest by the ryot-wurry. He had over and over again endeavoured to prove the poverty of the people upon whom the ryot war tax was levied; but he was deprived of the advantage of the returns which he ought to possess, and was, therefore, obliged to take such information as the report furnished him with. Accordingly, at page 83 of the report he found Mr. Elliott stating that the number of ryots paying an assessment of only 20s. a-year was 630,704; and that in the five northern circans (or governments) the average number of pauper ryots was 30,000, and the population 4,250,000. If, therefore, the pauper population in the remaining fifteen provinces were in the same proportion, there would be no less than 786,426 pauper proprietors in the presidency. Was this system a damnosa hereditas from the Mahomedans? Had we inherited it from the barbarous Mahomedan Governments who If they refused to Cruel and fiscal rapa city of the East India ourable Hon more barba ous than the Mahome dan governments of old. had preceded us in the occupation of India? No; there was a Government more barbarous than they. It was the East India Company. It was the cruelty and fiscal rapacity of the East India Company. It was by them and their means that these paupers had been created. Here was the statement of one Company. of the company's own servants, and he implored their lordships' attention to it. Lieut. Grove said he could assert from his experience among the natives, that without using force a con- The siderable portion of the revenue never could be collected; and East India the same difficulty would exist so long as men who were Company wretchedly poor and utterly unfitted for anything but coolie work (day labour) were permitted, either voluntarily or by force, to become cultivators. In every village there were some bits of bad land which the wealthier ryots would not cultivate; but as the annual demand of the Government must somehow or other be paid, the names of some of the poorer inhabitants, and sometimes without their knowledge, were put down for these bad bits of land. It was in vain for them to remonstrate, and urge the plea of poverty in their behalf. They were told that the Government money must be raised. take the land, the village authorities brought them to the notice of the Zemindar, and then by force, moral and physical, they were constrained to cultivate. What was this but feudal The East slavery? The ryot was forced to labour at public works with- India Com out reward, and torture was resorted to for the purpose of vory. carrying out the orders of the Government. What was this, then, in the name of common sense, but substantial slavery? He came now to the union of the two offices of police and revenue in the same functionaries. In 1792, Lord Cornwallis made a complete separation of the administration of revenue from the administration of police, and his regulations were first carried out in Bengal. In 1802, they were introduced in Madras, but in 1816 they were rescinded, and the offices of magistrate and collector united in one and the same person, though it was not without some able and spirited protests that the inhuman order was carried into effect. Mr. Fullerton, the member of Council for Madras, expressly pointed out the consequences with respect to torture from the union of the two offices. He said it was not intended, he presumed, to make the police, the administrators of the criminal law, subservient to the collection of the revenue; to vest in the collector such a degree of overwhelming authority as to enable him to dictate the terms of pany's sla |